On September 11, 2001, they were in middle school. The soldiers who have fought our longest war have lived lives shaped by conflict.

I sweated through Army basic training in the sticky heat of summertime Georgia at twenty-seven, which made me an old man in our platoon of infantry recruits. Most of the others were a decade younger, and many had been in high school just weeks before. War would define their entry into manhood. For a young man of twenty-five today, the country has always been at war.

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So it was for Daniel Rodriguez, the improbable walk-on wide receiver for Clemson University who turned nineteen in Kuwait, twenty in Iraq, and twenty-two in the remote mountains of Afghanistan. He came home from the war soul-wounded, angry, and confused. He drank himself through many low months and thought about killing himself, as two of his Army friends would do. Which sounds a lot like a recent Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America survey of its members: A third have considered suicide, a third know a fellow service member who killed himself, and nearly half know someone who has tried.

These young men — and, increasingly, women — who have fought overseas during the dozen years of this Long War may represent a tiny sliver of American society, but they are part of a vast and timeless cohort through the ages: soldiers who have a hard time making sense of their place in society once they return home. In past wars, when more of the citizenry served, perhaps we would have found some added solace in the shared history, just knowing that neighbors or coworkers had been to the same place — in the world or in their hearts. But war takes a person so far outside the rhythms of normal life that the journey home is disorienting, if not treacherous, no matter the level of support and understanding. That's how it was for me and most of the veterans I know — feeling alienated and out of step, frustrated with ourselves or those around us.

Which makes Rodriguez's transition all the more compelling to me, going from the severity of his experiences at the far fringes of a neglected war to where he ended up: the Clemson crowd cheering madly for him as he made his first college catch.

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They call Clemson's stadium Death Valley, which is darkly funny in Rodriguez's case, even in a sport full of overblown analogies equating it with war and mortal struggle. He lived for months in a real valley of death, a patch of exposed ground speckled with bunkers and surrounded by high mountain walls from which Taliban fighters could shoot down on him, as they did most every day.

Just before dawn on October 3, 2009 — a Saturday, game day! — more than 350 Taliban fighters swarmed down those mountains and stormed the outpost. Rodriguez's friend Kevin Thomson died next to him, shot in the head in the first few minutes of fighting, one of eight Americans killed. Another twenty-two were wounded, including Rodriguez, peppered with shrapnel from a rocket-propelled grenade. Rodriguez threw sixty-two hand grenades, and he and his fellow soldiers killed 150 of the attackers in a daylong battle filled with desperate heroics, resulting in two Medals of Honor, nine Silver Stars, and a few dozen more medals for valor.

How do you come home from that?

Rodriguez had been a star high school football player, and after the months of post-Afghanistan, screw-the-world, no-one-knows-what-I've-been-through darkness, he rekindled his dream to play college ball, worked out three times a day, and made a stylish video showcasing his manic drive that blew up on YouTube and drew coaches' attention.

"When I devote myself to something rather than sulk in my reclusiveness, that's what helps get me through it. The more I put time into something I was passionate about, the more I strayed away from my nightmares and waking up in panics and sweats. I still have my moments, but I found balance," he says.

"So many veterans come home and just revolve their lives around the negativity," he says. "Everybody's gone through adversity. Just because you enlisted doesn't make you special."

While Rodriguez may seem an anomaly among his cohort of young war veterans, I find profound value in his story for this reason: He does not view himself as a war veteran or a college athlete; rather he defines himself by everything in between then and now — the darkness, the coming to terms, the decision to transform, and the lonely, relentless work. The first element, the darkness, is a given for many. The rest is a choice.

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